ABOUT THE PROJECT
LOGLINE
A celebration of mentorship, creativity, and the power of collective movement to build community.
SYNOPSIS
LYN is a feature documentary that profiles Lyn Isbell, the founder and director of the Michigan City Soul Steppers, as both a brilliant artist and a fierce mentor whose life’s work sits at the intersection of art, discipline, and social justice. Lyn is a commanding yet nurturing figure who has transformed a local church step ministry into an elite drill and step team that competes nationally. Like Buck Brannaman in Buck, Lyn is a living embodiment of her philosophy—her presence in a room changes the energy. She teaches precision, self-respect, and the power of unity through choreography that is as emotionally rich and formally complex as anything choreographed by Pina Bausch.
The film follows Lyn and her team across one transformative season, capturing the rhythms of rehearsal, the rigors of competition, and the quiet, personal moments where mentorship happens—on the sidelines, in car rides, during check-ins when a kid is about to quit. This vérité thread grounds the film in real lives, real stakes, and the emotional gravity of growing up with few safety nets outside of the Soul Steppers’ ranks. The film also explores the social context: the ways policing, poverty, and systemic neglect shape the lives of the Black youth Lyn serves.
Yet the documentary does not frame them as victims. Instead, it places their movement, sound, and discipline front and center—a loud, unapologetic assertion of worth. LYN is a hybrid of vérité intimacy and stylized visual poetry. It is both a character study of a woman who sees art as salvation and a tribute to the power of collective movement as a form of social resistance and self-actualization.
Like Buck and Pina, it honors a singular artist whose process is both intensely personal and profoundly communal—a mentor who has turned every step, every cadence, into a declaration of dignity.
PROJECT TYPE Documentary Feature
DIRECTOR Eric Seals
PRODUCER Melissa Shea, Andrew Shea
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ID: 753